Dod a Chock: Beaches and Dreams
by Todd B. James
Summary: After The Gunslinger, before the Drawing of the Three, these are the final thoughts of Roland as a complete man. Slight spoilers.


Disclaimer: I am nowhere near psychotically imaginative enough to create Roland nor any piece or part of Mid-World, yet the entire thing inspires me to write this. It might have a few spoilers, major or minor, depending on what you've read of Mr. King's Dark Tower series, so read at your own discretion if you haven't read any of these excellent works.  
  
Dod-a-Chock: Beaches and Dreams  
  
The western sea. It was almost a surreal sight, so much water after that endless desert. Even though not even a single drop of it was usable by Roland, it was still a strange relief. The presence of so much vast quantities of clear, blue water after a nearly infinite stretch of hardpan desert simply had that effect. Roland sat on the sand- comfortable after all that hard ground- and just took in the sea's entrancing movement and color. The setting sun reflecting off the sea's calm meandering waves threw off hypnotic orange light which had a mesmerizing effect on him, similar to the light from a fire dancing within the net-like structures of a pile of devil-grass would. In fact, the light was very mesmerizing, much like the light of that mountainside fire started out of thin air by the Man in Black during their palaver last night. Or was it last year? Or was it last decade, or last century? Who really knew for sure? Roland himself didn't even have a clue.  
  
He really didn't need or care to have one, at this point. His journey had been seemingly mapped out for him, and once again, he was alone on his quest. Time and its increasingly curious pace was the furthest thing on his mind. He simply sat there and stared at the waves, smelled and tasted the sea's subtle combination of salt and decay, listened to the epic crashing of the breakers, and felt the comfort of warm yet noticeably cooling sand. He felt something else, too. His back pocket once again familiarly bulged with the unique lines and curves of a jawbone, this time from good 'ol Walter himself. The comfort and security brought by this jawbone was unexplainable yet undeniable.  
  
Ka, Roland thought. Ka. There was no other explanation for why he felt he needed it, and there was no clear sign as to what its purpose was going to be just yet, but to Roland, reason and rhyme came second to the sharp yet hazy foresight Ka instilled on its subjects. It was also the very reason he was on this quest to begin with.  
  
Roland decided against reflecting on the past for the time being, and focused on the present. To aid in the focusing, Roland gingerly pulled the jawbone out of his no-colored jeans' back pocket as carefully as if it were a delicate rose, and regarded it as one would regard a priceless artifact recovered from an archaeological dig. However long Roland had been out, it certainly wasn't a cat-nap. The right side of the jawbone showed the start of a fine crack that snaked its way along the run of the jaw, through the subtle rut-like indentation under the back teeth, and into the lonely pit where the right canine had once been firmly rooted. A few other teeth were missing, and the u-shaped part that hinged into the skull was split and splintered like a piece of old driftwood.  
  
Or an old piece of ironwood, all traces of its organic past long forgotten. A piece of ironwood like the piece of ancient firewood back at the Man in Black's final resting place. Or maybe a staff of ironwood, like the staff which Cort used to regularly beat his students into submission. Roland stared off into the sunset again, a wistful crease of a smile carving upwards of his weathered face. He thought of Cort, how he had been more of a father to him than Steven Deschain had ever been. He thought of all those skull-rappings he received from Cort because of an unsure answer, or a sure, wrong answer. He thought of that morning, so long ago, when he marched steely-eyed into that courtyard with trusty David on his arm, a fever of forced maturity bubbling like a cauldron beneath his adrenaline- soaked skin. He thought of a battered and defeated Cort, laying on that cot looking like a victim of runaway, demented machinery. Without warning, his mind shot to Marten. The canyon of a smile faded faster than the sunset that tinged his eyes with a rim of gold in the growing darkness. Marten. A person Roland had associated solely with evil, betrayal, lies, contempt, and hatred. The very person who forcefully grated Roland's career into high gear.  
  
Roland unthinkingly slipped the jawbone back into his pocket, drossing his arms over his folded legs into a thought-enhancing chinrest. His piercingly blue hawk's eyes squinted against the nearly departed sun's rays in the look of a man terminally resolute in his quest. The look of a man willing not only to let a beloved child fall to his death, but willing also to risk his own death in order to save the same child three, four, thirty, a hundred more times. With the aching, regret-laden thoughts of Jake suddenly rushing into the creeps, cracks and crevices of his mind, Roland's lacerating stare was softened into a sorrowful, pleading gaze that wished upon wishing to find those wise yet comfortingly innocent eyes again. "Go, then. There are other worlds than these," Jake had said to him, before Roland's decision was cemented into finality. The very words that would later threaten to tear his mind in two.  
  
A tear threatened to roll down Roland's cheek, but he decided against it. He had mourned enough for one lifetime, perhaps even three lifetimes, and he made up his mind that that was all the mourning he could stand. The last glint of the quickly departing sun flashed on these aborted vessels of lamentation before being blinked back and drained into a sorrowless sniff. The day was over, and so was that era of Roland's just-begun quest. Time to get some rest. Time to approach the next phase of Roland's quest for the Dark Tower. The Drawing of the Three, the true beginning of his quest as foretold by Walter's Tarot reading, would begin at first light tomorrow. By the weight and foreshadowing of Walter's reading, Roland knew it would be no easy undertaking, and would require the very prime of his efforts, and the peak of his razor-sharp abilities. Of course, it wasn't like he hadn't slept in a year, (actually, he had slept for a year, or ten or whatever) but the night was no time for traveling, and a year or more's worth of sleep or not, he was tired.  
  
He linked his hands behind his head, laid on his back in the sand, and closed his eyes. He opened them quickly to seek the reassurance of Old Mother, when he felt a bit of a stinging sensation on the first and middle fingers of his right hand. He unclasped his hands, propped himself up on his left elbow and looked at his fingers, searching for the irritant, blood if there was any. Finding none of either, he suddenly caught a disconcerting wave of Ka-like intuition that flooded his mind for a very long second, then passed on as if it were nothing more than a warm breeze of seamist. Roland started to lay back down, then regarded his hand in the rising moonlight, suddenly awash with a deluge of thanksgiving. He thought it necessary to thank his hands for being faithful all these years, serving as vehicles of his will, vessels of the kill. He almost laughed at this, then clasped his hands behind his head and lay back down. Roland then recited the Gunslinger's Mantra- pasing off his sudden misplaced feelings of thanksgiving to a mere lapse in training- drifting off to sleep shortly after the last line.  
  
"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye.  
  
"I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind.  
  
"I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill..." he pauses to yawn, then finishes the line: "with my heart."  
  
Alrighty. That was pretty long, I know, but if there was anything in there worth liking, then go ahead and Read and Reply!  
  
-T.B.J. 


End file.
